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m mm\ injores the free prig mah. 



THE SLAYE-LABOR SYSTEM 



THE 



FKEE WORKING-MAN^S WORST ENEMY. 



By CHARLES NORDHOFF. 




NEW TOKK : 
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 

1865. 



PAKTS OF THIS PAMPHLET HAVE APPEARED IN THE EDITOEIAL 
COLUMNS OF THE NEW YOKK " EVENING POST." 



CONTENTS. 






Free workingmen forced to be slave-guards, 

The free laborer injured by the slave, ... 

Free workingrnen must give way to slaves, 

The fat for the slave, the lean for the free workingman 

Slaves are trained to mechanical pursuits, 

Why free workingraen hate the slaves, 

Free Avorkingmen are " pests to society," 

How free workingraen are overtaxed in slave states. 

Enormous and unequal taxation of free workingraen. 

How slaves outvote free workingraen, 

Free workingraen fly frora the slave states, . 

Slavery exterminates free mechanics, . . . 

Slavery s^huts out Germans and Irishmen, . 

How to lessen taxation, 

We cannot afford slavery, 

Virginia and Pennsylvania compared, . 
Slavery lowers the value of land, .... 
Slavery leaves no chance for small farmers, , , 
Why the slave states lack capital. 



rici 
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5 

6 
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10 
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15 
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22 
26 
27 
28 
31 
34 
36 



What Democratic Leaders ttiink of Slaverj, 



" Speaking for m3'self, slavery is to me the most repugnant 
of all Imman institutions. No man alive should hold me in 
slavery ; and if it is my business no man, with my consent, shall 
liold another. Thus I voted in 1S51, in Ohio, with my party, 
wliich made the new constitution of my own State. I have 
never defended slavery ; nor has my party." 

SjJeech of lion. S. S. Cox^ of Ohio, in the House of Bepre- 
^entativcs, Jan. 12, 1865. 

Mr. Brooks, of New York, in defending slavery, " did not 
pretend to speak for tlie democratic party. Indeed, he does 
not profess to speak for it, but rather as an old line Whig, hav- 
ing now his views independent of all machines of party. 
During the last session he Jield that slavery was dead. Gentle- 
men should not object to his eulogizing the deceased, but by so 
doing he does not intend, nor does he if he intends^ commit any 
democrat to his moral convictions," 

Sjyeech of Hon. S. 8. Cox, of Ohio, in the House of RepvG' 
sentatives. Jan. 12, 1865. 



^) 



" The democratic party of the free states are neither the ad- 
vocates nor the apologists fur slavery. Democracy and slavery 
are natural enemies. Impressed with the value of free labor, 
there is not a democrat in the North who would not resist the 
establishment of slavery in a free state." 

Speech of Hon. William S. Holman, of Indiana, in the 
House of Representatives, Jan. 13, 1865. 

" I have ever believed slavery wrong. The North have al- 
ways believed it. Hardly one can at present be found who will 
claim that slavery is now, or has ever been, other than an evil. 
* * * The South, by rebellion, has absolved the demo- 



11 



cratic party at tlie Nortli from all obligation to stand np longer 
for the defence of its 'cornerstone.' Thej are now using the 
very system which this amendment proposes to abolish, for the 
overthrow of our government, founded on the broad principles 
of right, justice, and humanity." 

* * -jf •«• * * * 

" I cannot but conclude, from the best light I can obtain, that 
the operation of tlds measure loill he most hcneJiGial to the non- 
slaveholding nnlilte 'poiyulatioii of the Southern States.. When 
these poorer laboring classes shall no longer have to contend 
with and struggle against and be degraded by slave labor, then, 
and not until then, will they come into the enjoyment of bless- 
ings such as are now folly enjoyed by the honest, toiling work- 
ingmen of the North. 

"When labor shall be free at the South, theuAvill it command 
and have the respect which is its just due. Then will millions of 
the white men of the North ])articipate and share in tlie bless- 
ings thus secured. The masses of our native and foreign-born 
laborers, now toiling in the severer climate of the North, will be 
invited to enter upon these newly-opened fields, for their in- 
dustry and occupation. The now hidden resources of the States 
South will be developed by the brain and muscle of the north- 
ern laborer, 

" The existence in our country of antagonistic systems of labor 
has brought upon the nation the terrible calamity of a wasting 
civil war, with all its desolations. It has cost the country the 
lives of Inmdreds of thousands of its best and bravest sons, and 
has wasted her material resources. 

" The day has come when this conflict of labor is to end, and 
the question is forced upon us l)y the South. They alone are 
resposible for it." 

Speech of lion. M. F. Odcll, of New Yorh, in the House 
of Representatives., Jan. dth, 18G5. 

" I am opposed to the re-adraission into the Union, with the 
rights of slave property of any State which our triumphant ar- 
mies have sul)jected." 

Speech of Hon. Klijah Ward, of New York, in ths House of 
Uepresentattves, Jan. \ith, 18G5. 

"I believe, and have ever ])clievcd since I was capable of 
thought, that it is a great alHiction to any country where it pre- 
vails ; and, so believing, I can never vote for any measure cal- 
culated to enlarge its area, or to render more permanent its 
duration. In some latitudes, and for Bome agricultural staples, 



Ill 



slave labor may be, to the master, tlie most valuable species of 
labor, tboiigli this I greatly doubt. In others, and particularly 
ill my own" State, I am convinced that it is the very dearest 
species of labor; and in all, as far as national -^-ealth and power 
and happiness are concerned, I am persuaded it admits of no 
comparison with the labor of freemen ; and, above all, disguise 
it as we may, if the laws of population shall not be changed by- 
Providence, or man's nature sliall not be changed, it is an insti- 
tution, sooner or later, pregnant with fearful peril. 

■St •«■ -:v •;-e -s- * 4f 

" I shall not stop to inquire, as I before intimated, whether 
the institution has produced the present war or not. However 
that may be, one thing, in my judgment, is perfectly clear, now 
that the war is upon us : tlxat a prosioerous and jjeimanent jpeace 
cannot he secured if the institution is jpermiited to stirvive. 

•X- ■!«■ w •JC- iJr "K- vf 

" As Ave at present are, I cease to liope that the government 
can be restored and preserved so as to accomplish the great ends 
for which it was established, unless slavery be extinguished. 

■S- w * i4- -Jr * * 

" If suffered to continue, it will ever prove a fruitful topic of 
excitement and danger to our continuing peace and union. Ter- 
minate it, and the imagination of man, I think, is unable to 
conceive of any other subject which can give rise to fratricidal 

strife. 

•K- * -x- * * * v«- 

" I think the honor and good name as well as the interest and 
safety of the country require, the abolition ot slavery through- 
out our limits." 

SjJceehof Hon. Beverdy Johnson^ of Maryland^ in the United 
States Senate, Apj'il 5th, 1864. 

" The question of slavery is rapidly diminishing in import- 
ance ; whether for good or evil, it is passing away." 

Speech of Hon. D. W. Voorhees, of Indiana, in the lionise 
of Rejpi'eseyitatives^ Jan. dth, 1865. 

Mr. Teaman, of Kentucky, justified "anti-slavery measures " 
by quoting a letter signed by John J. Crittenden, William T. 
Barry, 11. C. Anderson, J. Cabell Breckinridge, G. Rol)ertson, 
John Eowen and B. W. Patton, all of Kentucky, urging the 
nomination of Henry Clay to the Presidency, and saying of 
Clay: 

" We apprehend that no mistake could be greater than that 



IV 



which would impute to him the wisli to extend the achnowl- 
edged evils of shivery ; for we are persuaded that no one enter- 
tains a stronger sense of its mischiefs than he does, or a more 
ardent desire, hy all prudent and constitutional means, to extir- 
pate it from our land." 

Mr. Teaman added : " Shall a man be told that it is wrong 
or disgraceful to hold opinions that have been sanctioned by the 
minds and hearts of such men." 

Speech of Hon. George II. Yeaman, of Kentucky y in the 
House of Representatives y Jan. dth, 18G5. 

" Slavery is the chief lever by which the rebel leaders have 
wielded the Southern mind ; and for that reason^ it has lost 
nearly all the sympathy and su])port it once maintained." 

Speech of Hon. Austin A. King, of Missoim, in the House 
of RepjresentativeSy Jan. IZth, 1865. 

" At the last session I voted against thepro]Xxsed amendment, 

but when the question is again taken, I intend to record my 

name in the affirmative." 

* -:j * * * * -2f 

" We never can have peace until we in some way dispose of 
the institution." 

Speech of Hon. James S. Bollins, of Missouri, in the House 
of Representatives, Jan. lAth, 1865. 

"The demoratic party never advocated slavery as a nioral in- 
stitution. That is a question which will not admit of discus- 
sion." 

New Yorh Leader, {organ of 2\ivunany Hall,) Jan. 7t/iy 

1865. 

"The triumphs of our army and navy have put the rebels in 
such straits tiuit tliey no longer refuse to listen to proi>ositions 
of peace; and the ])lan of getting rid of slavery legally by a 
constitutional amendment which shall recognise and rcspect the 
rights of States, is a democratic; measure, suggested by demo- 
crats, and it ought to be supported by democrats." 

New York Leader, {organ of Tammany Hall,) Jan. \Uh, 
1865. 



How Slaferj Injuies Free Wofipen, 



The slave-labor system gives to the capitalist many unjust 
advantages over the poor free workman ; it gives to a dozen 
slave-owners, with a thousand slaves, as many votes in the Le- 
gislature, and as great a political power in the State as is pos- 
sessed by five hundred free workingmen ; it discourages schools, 
prevents the formation of villages and towns ; and gives to 
slave mechanics, slave shoemakers, slave blacksmiths, slave car- 
penters, slave wheelwrights, the labor, and to their wealthy 
masters the profits, which of right belong to the free working- 
man. To quote the words of the governor of a slave state, 
Governor Cannon, of Delaware, " Slave labor is uncompen- 
sated, white labor is compensated ; when the two are brought 
into competition, white labor is crowded out. If capital owns 
its labor, the avenues to honest livelihood are forever closed to 
the white." 

AVhen a slave commits murder in Virginia, or any of the 
other Slave States, he is hanged, and his owner is paid for him 
the price he could have sold him for before the crime was com- 
mitted. He is paid for the slave out of the treasury of the State ; 
that is to say, ilie tax-jpayers j^ay the slaveholder for his slave. 

When a farmer's bull does mischief and is killed, does the 
State pay the farmer ? When a farmer's horse becomes unman- 
ageable and is killed, does tlie State pay for him ? Not at alL 
It is only the slave, the peculiar property of the rich, for whom 
the tax-payers are taxed. The poor man's horse or cow may be 
killed without payment to the owner. 



4 HOW SLAVERY INJTJKES THE FKEE WORKINGMAN. 

FREE WORKINGMEN, AS SLAVE-GUARDS. 

In the Slave States, wlietlier in the city or in the country, 
a patrol of the white men is kept up at night — for what ? 
To secure the persons and property of free workingmen ? ITot 
at all ; but to look after the slaves of the rich : to prevent the 
slaves from running away ; to keep them from visiting strange 
plantations ; to catch them and bring them back, if they stray 
into the woods. " An ordinance organizing and establishing 
patrols for the police of slaves in the Parish Court of St. Landry, 
in Louisiana," which lies before us, describes minutely the or- 
ganization of such patrols. " Every fi-ee white male person, 
between the ages of 16 and 60," is bound to do patrol duty. 
The parish (county) is to pay for " all books, blanks, papers, 
laws, &c., required for the organization of the patrols." Captains 
of patrols are to see that the enrollment for this duty includes 
every man ; and anyone who neglects or refuses to serve, " at 
any hour of the day or night" which may be appointed, shall be 
fined or imprisoned. Six pages of the pamphlet are then taken 
up with defining the powers and duties of the patrols towards 
the slaves. They have no other duty to perform, as the title, 
indeed, asserts. They are " patrols for the police of the slaves." 
They are not to look out for horse-thieves, or to hunt for stolen 
cattle ; it is made no part of their duty to guard the lives and 
property of the white workingmen of the county. " Every free 
•white male, between 16 to 60," in the county is required to 
mount guard over the peculiar property of the few wealthy 
planters. 

Now the parish of St. Landry had, in 1860, according to the 
census, 10,703 M-hitcs, and 11,136 slaves. According to the last 
census there were 3,953,587 slaves, and somewhat less than 100,- 
000 slaveholders in the country— an average of ten slaves to 
each owner. At that rate the slaves in the parish of St. Laudry 
would be owned by eleven hundred and forty-three of the 
10,703 whites (for children and women own slaves as well as 
men) ; and the 'whole free jMjmlatwn of the count// was taxed, 
in time, labor, and tnoney, to cai^c for the projperty of a littU 
ftiore than a tenth, and those the wealth lest part. 

Do not suppose tluit the white workingmen of the Slave States 
have not felt the oppression of this burden. Where they have 



THE FREE LABORER AND THE SLAVE. 5 

been permitted, tliej have complained. Thus, in an address of 
Mr. Pierpoint, of Yirginia, delivered in 1860, he remarked : 

" The clerk or mechanic needs no protection of the law ; he 
is one of the sovereign hody guard to iwote t and keep in sub- 
ordination the master's slaves. Yet his income — the labor of 
his weary hand and aching head, is taxed tivo per cent, to buy 
arms and erect armories in which to maniifecture the nnmi- 
lions of v/ar, unth ichicli to equip himself., to defend the mastiT 
in his right to his slaves.'''' 

An address to the working people of Yirginia, in 1860, called 
attention to tlie fict that " if a bull or a steer of one of our far- 
mers becomes vicious, so as to be a public nuisance, he is or- 
dered by the law to be killed, and his loss falls upon his owner, 
and upon him alone ; but if it happens that a slave of one of the 
Eastern Yirginia capitalists becomes vicious and commits crime 
he is hanged or transported, and it is provided h>j law that his 
owner shall he i)aid his assessed value out of the State Treasury?'' 

The appropriation, by the Yirginia Legislature, in 1856, for 
jiatrols, and as pay to slave owners for vicious slaves hanged or 
transported, amounted to over forty thousand dollars ! At the 
same time, every laboring man in the State, with an income 
above. $250 per annum, had to pay a heavy income tax, while 
the slaves of the rich were almost totally exempted from taxa- 
tion. 

THE FREE LAEORER ^NJXD THE SLAVE. 

The system of bond-labor is antagonistic to that of free laljor^ 
and breeds in the masters a contempt for the workingman, as well 
as for his vocation. This is perfectly natural, and indeed unavoid- 
able. TJie slave-oimier is a competitor in the slave-market agairist 
the free worldngman. He lives upon the labor of his slaves, 
and he regards with dislike the free laborers who come into 
the market to bid against him and the labor he controls. 

This ftict is notorious in the South. It has long attracted the 
attention of free white workingmen there, but they have 
been too weak to resist the powerful slave-holders. In 1860, 
Robert C. Tharin, of Alabama, once a law-partner of the 
notorious William L. Yancey, endeavored to set up a news})aper 
called the lion- Slaveholder, to urge the passage of a law forbid- 
d ug the employment of slaves except in agricultural labor and as 



6 now 6LAVEEY INJUKES THE FREE WOKKINGMAN". 

servants. lie thus sought to protect tlie free mechanics, and 
secure them employment. For this Mr. Tharin was summarily 
driven from the State. 

Mr. Tharin, exposing the sopistries of William L. Yancey, 
writes : 

"He Iiad seen the rich man's negro * come in contact' with 
the ]><>()r white bhicksmilh, the poor white bricklayer, carpenter, 
wheel I'ight, and agriculturist. Jle had neeii the jyrt'fercnca in- 
varialbj r/iccit to the rich 7nan\'i negro in all such pursuits and 
trades ; like me, he had heard the cornjjlaints of the ])oor white 
mechanic of the South against this very negro equality the rich 
planters were rapidly bringing about. These things he iiad heard 
and seen in ('harleston, Kew Orleans, Mobile, Montgomery, 
and Wetumpka 

" Have TKjt the planters /or years condemned every mechanic 
in the South to negro egmdity f'' exclaims Mr, Tharin. "I 
never envied the planters of Wetumpka, or, indeed, of any part 
of the iSouth. My didike to them arose from their conteniptible 
meanness, their utter disregard of decency^ their supercilious 
arrogance, and their daily usurpations of powers and ])rivilegea 
at variance with my rights, and the rights of my class." 

FREE WOEKINGMEN MUST GIVE WAY TO SLAVES, 

In 1853 the free mechanics of Concord, Cabarras county, North 
Carolina, held a meeting, at which they com[)laiued that the 
^'•wealthy oioners of slave mech'inics were in the hahit of aa-ler- 
"bidding them in contracts.''^ The free mechanic who lc<l in thi3 
movement was driven irom the town. A Long Island carpenter 
removed to a southern town ; he w;is asked for an estimate for 
certain work in his trade. The person who proposed to have 
it done demurred at the price, and remarked that he could do 
letter to jjuv a carpenter^ let him do the work and sell him 
again when it was done. The free carpenter, being a man of 
Bense, })ackcd up his tools and returned to New York, where 
a rich man cannot buy a carpenter and sell him again. 

Olmsted relates, in his " Texas Journey," tiiat at Austin, the 
capital of the state, the Gentum mechanics con)plained that 
whin the labor for building the state capital was given out, 
many of theni came with otici-s, but were undcrlid by the 



FREE WOEKINGMEN MUST GIVE WAY TO SLAVES. ^ 

owners of slave-mecJianies. But when the free mechanics had 
left town, in search of employment elsewhere, the slave owners 
threw np their contracts, and, having no longer any opposition, 
obtiuned new contracts at advanced prices. 

In the iron mines and furnaces near the Cumberland river, 
in Tennessee, before the war, several thousand men found em- 
ployment—but almost without an exception they were slaves 
One company had a capital of S700,000-and owned seven hun- 
dred slaves. Of course an equal number of free toorlcmen were 
TuUecl of employment, and had either to starve, or emigrate to 
the Free States, as so many thousands have done. 

THE "fat" FOPv the SLAVE, AND THE « LEAN " FOK THE FREE 
WOKKINGaiAN, 

Printers call that work which is most qm'ckly and easily done, 
and which is the best paid, " fot ; " that which is hard to do aud 
poorly paid, they call 'Mean." Kow, in all mechanical and 
other labor performed in the Slave States, the slave constantly 
gets the best, the easiest— the/s-^;; the free mechanic or laborer, 
ii ho is employed at all, gets only the leavings of the slave, the 
lean. This comes about, because the slave-owner is a wealthy 
and influential man, who is able to select the lightest tasks for 
his slave; by this the slave owner of course makes the greatest 
profit, and incurs the least expense. But the free white work- 
ingman must stand aside, or take that task which the slave-owner 
will not have. 

In Virginia, a wealthy slave-owner told Olmsted that he used 
Hussey's reaper rather than McCormick's, because " it was more 
readily repaired by the dave-UacJcsmith on the ftirm." Another 
planter in Virginia employed a gang of Irishmen in draining 
some land. But mark the reasons he gave for this use of free 
labor. " It's dangerous work" (unwholesome), said he ; " and a 
n^gro^s life is too valicaUe to he risked at it. If a neo-ro dies it 
is a considerable loss, you know." This slaveholder did not care 
how many Irishmen died in his malarious ditches. So, too, on 
the southwestern steamboats, slaves are employed to do the 
ligJdest and least dangerous labor ; but Irish and German free 
Viorkingmen are employed to perform the exhausting and dan- ' 



8 HOW SLAVERY INJURES THE FREE "WORKINGMAIT. 

gerous worJc. Thus, on tlie Alabama river, Olmsted observed 
that slaves were sent npon the bank to roll down cotton bales, 
but Irishmen were kept below to drag them away. The mate 
of the boat said, by way of explanation, " The niggers are worth 
too much to be risked here ; if the Paddies are knocked over- 
hoard^ or get their hacJcs hrohe^ nobody loses anything.'''' 

Alfred E. Matthews, of Starke county, Ohio, in his " Journal 
of his Flight'' from Mississippi, in 18G1, remarks: ^^ I have seen 
free white mechanics ohligcd to stand aside while their families 
were suffering for the necessaries of life^ v:hen slave mechanics^ 
owned hy rich and, influential men^ could get 2^denty of loork ; 
and I have heard these same white mechanics breathe the most 
bitter curses agaiust the institution of slavery and the slave 
aristocracy." In his journal at Columbus, Mississippi, he writes : 
" Business is very dull. Many of the free white mecham'cs have 
nothing to do, and there is a great deal of suffering amongst 
them. Most of wliot little worh is to he done is given tothe slave 
mechanics. An intelligent carpenter, an accpiaintance of one of 
the persons in the office where I was engaged, came np one day 
and told his friend that his family were suffering for provisions ; 
he had no money, and could not get work at anything, lie 
assured me this was the case with others of his acquaintance.'' 
This was in a town of three thousand five hundred inhabitants. 

SLA-VES ARE TRAINED TO JIECHANICAL PURSUITS. 

On a rice plantation in South Carolina the planter showed 
Mr. Olmsted " shops and sheds at which blacksmitlis, carijcnters, 
and other mechanics — all slaves — were at work." Of course, 
this jplanter emjployed^ no free mechanics. Indeed, the writer 
of this pamphlet was told by a wealthy Alabamian in 1800, that 
</i6 ^^rt/i/tTS in his region were determined to discontinue alb^- 
geiher the employment of free mechanics. " On my own place," 
said this person, " I have now slave carpenters, slave bhicksmitli:-, 
and slave wheelrights, and thus 1 a^n indej^iendent of free me- 
chanics.''^ 

These instances, culled from southern life, show tlio bearing 
of tlie slave system upon the free working population. Tiie 
planters do not need the assi.stancc of the free laboring class ; 
they despise it, and discourage it. What is the result 'i Let 



SLAVES AKE TRAINED TO MECHANICAL PURSUITS. 9 

" mudsill" Hammond, Governor of South Carolina, bear wit- 
ness. In an address before the South Carolina Institute, some 
years ago, he said : 

" According to the best calculations which, in the absence of 
statistic facts, can be made, it is believed that of the three hun- 
dred thousand white inhabitants of South Carolina there are 
not less than fifty tliousand whose industry, such as it is, is not 
in the present condition of things, and does not promise here- 
after, such a support as every white person in this country is and 
feels himself entitled to." 

In another part of his address he said : " Eighteen or at most 
nineteen dollars will cover the whole necessary annual cost of a 
full supply of wholesome and palatable food, purchased in the 
market," for one person in South Carolina. It would seem, 
therefore, that so completely had the slave system rohhed the 
free worhingman of the opportunity to make an honest liveli- 
hood., that one-sixth of the free white po^ndation of South Ca- 
rolina could not earn even the paltry sum of eighteen dollars per 
annum ! So completely have the slaveholders monopolized the 
labor market for their slaves ! 

The bitter hatred of the " free white" in the South for the 
negro has been often spoken of. Does any one wonder at it, 
v/hen he considers that these free men feel the wrongs they 
suffer, but are too ignorant to trace them to their sources ? They 
hate the slaves, but if they were somewhat more intelligent they 
would hate the slaveholders, who are the authors of all their 
woes. It is because Mr, Lincoln, himself a southern man, and 
a son of one of the oppressed and expatriated free workingmen 
of the South, understands this, that he will not suffer the re-esta- 
blishment of the iniquitous class of monopolists of labor, whose 
liatred for free workingmen has dragged the country into a civil 
war. He aims, not so much to free the slave, as to free the 
worldngrnen. He sees, as a stateman, that a system which degrades 
and discourages free labor, and whose supporters hate and refuse 
to employ free workingmen, is ruinous to the prosperity of the 
country, and is necessarily the parent of constant dissensions, the 
fruitful source of hatreds, jealousies and heart-burnings. He 
knows as a stateman, that the security of free government rests 
upon the virtue, intelligence and prosperity of the working class : 
2 



10 now SLAVERY ESTJUEES THE FEEE WOEKINGMAIT. 

and that if we desire the perpetuity of our Union and liberties, 
we must sweep out of the way a system whose constant and ne- 
cessary tendency is to impoverish and debase the free workingman. 

WHY FREE WOKKINGMEN HATE THE SLAVES. 

They hate the slaves because slavery oppresses them. Turn 
where he will, the southern free nneclianic and laborer finds the 
negro slave jyreferred hefore him,. The planter has liis slav^e 
blacksmith, his slave carpenter, his slave wheelwright, his slave 
engineer, if he needs one. It is now as it was in Marion's day, 
who said : " The people of Carolina form two classes — the rich 
and the poor. The poor are generally very poor, because, not 
heln/j necessary to the r/cA, who have slaves to do all tlielr worlc, 
they get no employment from them." 

The slaveholders have the political power ; they look only to 
their own interests | and even Avhere they have established ma- 
nufactures, they have given work by preference to slaves over free 
men and women. " We are hcginninrj to inamtfacture vnth 
slaves^"" wrote Governor Hammond of South Carolina, in 1S45, 
to Thomas Clarkson. A writer in tlie Augusta Constitutionalist^ 
quoted approvingly by De Bow, in 1852, said, " for manufactur- 
ing in the hot and lower latitudes, slaves arc pcculiarh' qualified, 
and the time is approching when they will l)e sought as the ope- 
rative tnost to be preferred and depended on. I could name 
factories in South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia, where the 
success of hlach labor has been encouraging." At the Saluda 
Factory, near Columbia, South Carolina, so long ago as 1^51, 
one hundred and twenty-eight operatives were enq)l(>ycd — all 
slaves, " Slaves not sufliciently strong to work in the cotton 
fields can attend to the looms and spindles," wrote the superin- 
tendent of this mill ; and he showed how these slaves under- 
worked the free whites : 

" Average cost of a slave operative, per annum $75 

" Average cost of a white operative, at least 1 i)(\ 



" Difference $31 

" Or over thirty ])er cent, saved in the labor alone by using only 
the weakly and deformed slaves." 



WIIT FKEE WOEKmOMEN HATE THE SLAVES. 11 

Free Icibor is hilled ly such unnatural competition, A writer 
upon mannfactures in the South, in 1852, compared the wages 
paid to operatives in Tennessee with those in Lowell ; " In Lowell, 
labor is paid the fair compensation of eighty cents per day for 
men, and two dollars per week for women, while in Tennessee 
the average compensation for labor does not exceed fifty cents 
per day for men, and one dollar and twenty-five cents per week 
for women." Another writer said : " A female operative in the 
New England cotton factories receives from ten to twelve dollars 
per month; this is more than a female slave generally hires for 
in the southwest^ This was twelve years ago. But he goea 
on to explain how the slaveholder^ monopolizing the labor of his 
slaves, has the power to control the labor market and uiiderlid 
the free worhman under any circumstances. "It matters 
nothing to him (the slaveholder) how low others can produce the 
article ; he can produce it lower still, so long as it is the best 
use he can make of his labor, and so loug as that labor is worth 
keeping." That is to say, a free white mechanic is at the mercy 
of his neighbor, the capitalist, in a slave state, because, if the car 
pitalist does not like his price, he can " go and huy a carpenter and 
sell him again when the work is done^ Thus, while it is true 
that in the long run and on the average free labor is always 
cheaper than slave labor, the capitalist who monopolizes the 
slave labor is able to drive out or starve out the free laborer^ 
over whom he and his slaves have an unfair advantage. The 
slaveholders used to boast that there were no " strikes" in the 
South — here we see the reason. The writer we have quoted 
adds: 

"7«! is a, fact that slaves learn llacTcsmithing, carpentering, 
loot and shoemaking^ and in fact all handicraft trades, with as 
much facility as white men ; and Mr. Deering of Georgia, hu3 
employed slaves in his cotton factory for many years with de- 
cided success." 

FEES WOEKINGMEH AEE *' PESTS TO SOCIETY. 

Olmstead, when he asked in the slave states why the white 
laboring men were not employed, was told that they were not 
hired " because you cannot drive them as you do a slave." The 
aristocratic slave-owner refuses to employ a workman whom h$ 



12 HOW SLAVERY INJUBES THE FREE WORKIXGMAJf. 

cannot flog and curse. On a rice plantation in Sontli Carolina 
he found a slave en(jineei\ for whose education in that profession 
his owner had paid iive hundred dollars to a steam-engine builder. 
This slave machinist, an able man, lived tetter than any Idbmnng 
■free lohite man in the district. His master, who also owned slave 
blacksmiths, carpenters, and other mechanics, did not emjdoy a 
single freeman^ except an overseer. But an estate of the same size 
and value in a free state would have given employment to twenty- 
five or thirty white mechanics of diiferent trades, not to speak 
of a large number of free lal)orers. 

By the census of 1850 it appears that the average wages of the 
female operatives in the Georgia cotton factories were $7 39 per 
per month ; in Massachusetts it was $14 57 per month. New 
England factory girls were induced by the special offer of high 
v/a es to go to Georgia to work in newly-established cotton 
factories, but they found the position so unpleasant, owing to 
the general degradation of the laboring class, they were very 
soon forced to return. Nor shall we wonder at this when we 
read the follov>-ing sentiment, wlijch appeared in the Charleston 
Standard^ in 1855 : 

" A large 2)ortion of the meclianical force that migrate to the 
South are a curse instead of aUessing ; they are generally a 
wortldess, mi-principled class^ enemies to our peculiar institution 
(slavery), and formidable barriers to the success of our native 
mechanics (slaves). Not so, however, with another class who 
migrate southward — we mean that class known as mcrcliants ; 
they arc generally intelligent and trustAvorthy, and they seldom 
fail to discover their true interests. They become slaveholders 
and landed proin-ietors ; and in ninety-nine cases out of a hun- 
dred they are better qualiiied to become constituents of our 
institutioii than a certain class of our native born, who from 
want of capacity are perfect drones in society, continually carp- 
ing about slave competition. * "" * The mechanics., the most 
of thein, are yesis to society, dangerous among the slave popula- 
tion, and ever ready to form combinations against the interests 
of the slaveholder.-' 

Is it strange that the ignorant, neglected, despised free white 
workingmaii of tlie slave states hates the slave? He feels that 
the slave injures him in every possible way; the slave robs him 



FREE WOEKTNGMEN ARE " PESTS TO SOCIETY." IS 

of work ; tlie slave deprives him of bread and clothing for his 
children ; the slave gets the easiest tasks, the free laborer the 
hardest and most dangerous ; the slave steps before hun when- 
ever he looks for a job, and has the preference everywhere, 
because he is the tool of a capitalist whose influence and wealth 
enable him to grasp — for his o^vn benefit — whatever might be of 
advantage to the free mechanic or laborer. 

The capitalist, in a slave state, is a man with a hundred black 
arms, all bare, all eagerly seeking work, all ready to work for 
less than a free man can support his family decently upon. The 
capitalist is a hundred-armed workman, with enough social 
influence to command work for all his hundred arms, to the 
exclusion of the honest free mechanic and laborer. The slave, 
in the hands of this capitalist, is the most dangerous enemy the 
free workman can have. Suppose a job of work for twenty 
mechanics is to be given out in a southern town — twenty free 
men offer themselves — but a slave-owner comes, with the prestige 
of great wealth, w^ith his social influence and his political power, 
and he gets the preference for his twenty slaves, the profits of 
lohose labor go to make him richer^ while his free neighbors 
grow poorer. It is not strange that the southern free working- 
men resent this monstrous wrong — but it is lamentable that they 
make the error of hating the tools with which the wrong is done, 
and not those who use these helpless tools, and the iniquitous 
system which permits it. It is as though a martyr should abhor 
only the thumb-screws which torture him, but regard kindly the 
executioner who applies them ; it is as though a western traveller 
should complain of the scalping knife, but love the Indian 
savage who uses it. 

It is the slave-holder who wi'ongs the free workingman. It is 
the slave system which oppresses him. Make the slave free and 
he is no longer your fatal competitor ; take the slaves away from 
the capitalist, and he has no longer the power to rob you of work 
and bread. Free the negroes, and you redeem the free white 
working-class from the domination of the selfish capitalists, and 
make the blacks themselves harmless to you. It is only while 
they arc slaves that the negroes injure the white working 
men. 



14 HOW SLAVERY INJUEES THE FEEE WOEKINGMAN. 

HOW FREE WORKINGMEN ARE OVERTAXED IN SLAVE STATES. 

We have shown how the slave-labor system robs the free 
workingman, the free mechanic and laborer, of employment and 
bread, and thus keeps him poor and helpless — of drives him into 
the fi-ee states. But the subjection of free labor in slave states 
does not stop there. Not only is the free workingman con- 
demned by the monopolists of slave labor to idleness and pov- 
erty, but his children are held in ignorance ; his political rights 
are cunningly abridged ; the products of his labor are forced to 
bear an unequal burden of taxation ; and he — the non-slave- 
holding workingman — is compelled by the laws to mount guard 
over the slaves of his wealthy neighbor, or else to pay for such 
a guard. Thus he is injured in every interest, for the benefit of 
the slaveholder. 

In the free states of the Union a poor man's vote counts as 
much as his wealthy neighbor's, and the millionaire enjoys no 
Special political privileges over the carpenter who builds his 
house, or the blacksmith who shoes his horse. We are accus- 
tomed to think this a good system, but how is it in the slave 
states? Take Virginia as an example. There, while in one 
branch of the Legislature men are represented, in the other 
money and slaves have also a large representation. 

So great was this political power of wealth, that before the 
war Un thousand white men — slaveholders — m Eastern Vir- 
ginia had as much power — as many votes — in the Senate, as 
forty thousand white men — non-slavebolders— of Western Vir- 
ginia. 

How did the slaveholders, the aristocrats of Eastern Virginia, 
use this power ? They exempted a great part of their peculiar 
property from taxation, and laid the burden of taxes upon the 
free workingmcn of the state. Thov ouacted a law by which 
all slaves under twelve years of age were exempted from taxation 
altogether— ^(/^ tJiey taxed the calves, the coifs, the lamhs, of the 
farmers. They limited the tax upon slaves over twelve years 
to one dollar and twenty cents per head ; but they taxed a 
trader with a capital of only six hundred dollars, sixty dollars 
for his first year's license, and a- heavy duty on his sales after« 
wards. The slave property of Virginia, before the war, paid about 



HOW FKEE WOEKINGMEN AKE OVERTAXED IN SLAVE STATES. 15 

$300,000 per annum taxes — but if it had heen taxed as other 
projperty was, according to value, it would have contributed 
one million three hundred thousand dollars per annum ! The 
odd million was raised by extra taxes on the earnings of the 
free laborers, 

Not only this — the products of slave labor were also exempted 
from taxation. Tobacco, corn, wheat and oats were not taxed ; 
but the product of free labor, consisting of cattle, hogs, sheep, 
&c., was heavily taxed ; as were also the earnings of free 
laboring men, who were obliged to pay an income tax. It was 
asserted by Mr. Peirpoint, in 1860, that " upwards of two hun- 
dred and thirty million dollars of the Virginia slaveholders' 
capital in slaves was exempted from taxation P 

But while the slave owner was so protected, see how it fared 
with the free laborer ? Every free mechanic, artisan, or laborer 
of whatever kind, Avho was in the employment of any person, 
was obliged, by a special law, to pay an income tax of one-half 
of one per cent, if his income did not exceed $250 : of one per 
cent, if his income was under $500 ; of one and a half per cent, 
if it was imder $1,000, and two per cent, if he earned over 
$1,000. Our workingmen think the United States income tax 
onerous ; but that, at least, exempts the man who earns less 
than $600. The Virginia slaveholders exempted only themselves / 
They taxed the poor, but left the the rich to pay nothing. 

ENOKMOUS AISTD imEQUAL TAXATION OP FREE WOEKINGMEN IN 

VIRGINIA. 

See how this act worked. In Wheeling there were employed 
in 1859 about 1,500 free men in the iron mills ; these earned an 
average of $400 per annum each. On this they had to pay one 
per cent. — four dollars — making $6,000 per annum ; besides 
eighty cents poll tax, $1,200 more ; total $7,200, drawn from 
1,500 free laboring men. Now this tax was equal to that 
levied on six thousand slaves. That is to say, each free 
workman was taxed four times as heavily as a slave. But take 
note of this : the owner of the slave was not only very lightly 
taxed for his property in him ; he paid no income tax at all. 
That is to say, the net income from the labor of sis thousancj 



16 HOW SLAVEEY INJURES THE FEEE WOEKINGMAN. 

elaves miglit be reckoned in those times at $900,000 per annum. 
On this the masters, the capitalists, who received this sum, paid 
not a cent of income-tax ! Or, take another example ; a foreman 
in a factory earned $1,100 per annum ; he had to pay $22 80 
income tax to the State. But a slave-owning capitalist paid no 
more than that as his tax on nineteen slaves ; he trained them 
to mechanical worlc — hired them out in such manner that the}' 
threw nineteen fi'ee mechanics out of employment — and on the 
proceeds of the labor of these nineteen slaves, amounting to 
$5,700 per annum, he was taxed not a single cent I 

" There are many poor men in this State," said Mr. 
Pierpoint in 1860, " getting 75, 80, 90, and 100 cents per day, 
with families to support, who all have to pay, in addition to the 
income tax, for everything they own on the face of the earth, 
forty cents on a hundred dollars, while the slaveholder only 
pays 10 cents on the hundred dollars' worth of slaves ! " " The 
income tax levied by the slaveholders upon the small incomes 
of free mechanics," Mr. Pierpoint said, " will eat out the 
very vitals of all the manufacturing energy of the State." 
Nor were the free mechanics the only suiFerers. " The farmer 
in Western Virginia (not a slaveholder) who 12 years ago paid 
his tax with 15 dollars, now pays $00, with little increase in 
actual value." Only the slaveholders were exempted! 

Thus was slave labor encouraged and free labor made penal 
in the South. Thus, to use Marion's words, the poor became 
poorer and the rich richer. Thus free mechanics were driven 
out of the slave states, taxed out, starved out, until, in 1859, 
Charleston, one of the chief seaports of the South, had not left 
60 much as a single ship-carpenter. Thus was brought about 
the unhappy condition of the free workingmen, described by 
Mr. Tarver, in " DeBow's Industrial Resources of the South and 
Southwest." 

" The acquisition of a respectable position in the scale of 
wealth ap})ears so diflicultthat they decline the hopeless pursuit, 
and many of them settle down into passive idleness, and become 
the almost passive subjects of all its consequences. An evident 
deterioration is taking place in this part of the population ; the 
younger portion of it l)eing less educated, less industrious, and 
in every point of view less respectable than their ancestors." 



HOW SLAVES OUT-VOTE FKEE WOEKINGMEN. 17 



now SLAVES OUT-VOTE FREE "WOKKINGMEN. , 

These are the effects of the slave labor system upon the 
unfortunate free laborers vvlio are subject to its influence. Bear 
in mind that it is not only in Virginia that the free mechanic 
and laborer is thus wronged. In Louisiana, in South Carolina, 
in most ot the slave states, slave property is represented and 
favored in some special manner. In Louisiana the representa- 
tion, under the old system, was apportioned according to the 
whole population — fi'ee and slave. Thereby it happened that 
the thousands of free laborers of Kew Orleans were placed at 
the mercy of a few enormously wealthy slave-owning capitalists 
in the sparsely settled river parishes ; and a thousand votes of 
free mechanics had not so nmich ])ower in the Legislature as ttoo 
hundred and fifty jplanteri votes, whose slaves filled vjp a legis- 
lative district. 

South Carolina has always been called the model slave state. 
Her system was and is the admiration of the slaveholding class. 
There the free laborer was entirely debarred from influence, 
totally unrepresented. He could vote — but not for one of his 
own class; only a slave owner could serve in the Legislature j 
only a slave oioner coidd he govcimor ; and the Legislature, coin- 
posed exclusively of slave owners, appointed the judges, the 
magistrates, the senators, the electors for President. 

Not only this — the Legislature set apart the state Congres- 
sional districts; and it managed this in such manner that the 
slaveholding interest was alone represented in Congress. The 
lower part of the State, where the slaves were most dense, sent 
four out of the seven representatives to Congress. In the legis- 
lative apportionment the free workingmen of the State were still 
more outraged. Five-sixths of the white population, residing in 
those counties wliere there were but few slaves, had only seventy- 
eight out of one hundred and twenty-two representatives in the 
Legislature— a little more than one-half. The Pendleton district, 
with over twenty-six thousand white inhabitants, but few slaves, 
sent but seven members; the parishes of St Philip and St. 
Michael, with less than nineteen thousand whites, but a heavy 
slave population, sent eighteen. 

Now take notice of the results of this system upon the free 
3 



1'8' HOW SLAVERY INJURES THE FKEE WOKKINGMAN. 

workingmen. Governor Seabrook, of South Carolina, said, in a 
message a few years ago : 

« Education has been provided by the Legishatnre hit for me 
class of the citisens of the State, which is the wealthy class _l*or 
the nliddle and poorer classes of society it has done nothing, 
since no organized system has been adopted tbr that purpose. 
«. * » -:r ^ Ten years ago twenty thousand adults, besides 
cW" -in, were unable to read or write, in South CaroHna lias 
our" free school svstem dispelled any of this ignorance? Are 
there not reasonable fears to be entertained that the number has 
increased since that period ? " 

In the Charleston Standard, in November, 1855, was advanced 
by eminent South Carolinians the atrocious doctrine that the 
State should educate only its capitalists and the officers and 
overseers wiio, under the order of the capitalists, should com- 
mand and direct the laborers. Chancellor Harper, one of the 
foremost men of the State, said, in a public address printed by 
De Bow, and received with general approval : 

« Would you do a benefit to the horse, or the ox, by giving 
him a cultivated understanding or fme feelings? So far as tlie 
mere laborer has the pride, the knowledge, and the aspiration of 
a free man, he is unfitted for his situation, and must doubly teel 
its infelicity." 

And what was the effect of this system upon the free work- 
in-men of the State ? Let Governor Hammond, one of its chief 
citizens, replv. Fifty thousand, he said, a sixth of the white 
population of the State, were iinable to cam their livivg. He 
added : " Most of them now follow agricultural pursuits, 7Ji 
^■feeble hut ivjurious com2Ktition with slave labors And another 
writer, whose essay on cotton and cotton manufactures at the 
South 'is printed by De P.ow, remarks that " a degree and extent 
of poverty and destitution exist in the Southern States among a 
certain class of people, almost unknown in the manufacturing 
districts of the North. * * * Boys and girls by thousands, 
destitute both of employment and the means of education, grow 
lip to ignorance and poverty, and too many of them to vice and 

crime." i • i .1 

Such are some— but not all— the disabilities under which the 



FKEE WOKKINGMEN FLY FROM THE SLAVE STATES. 19 

free wor]d)\2;5nan labors, in a State where tlie slave-labor system 
prevails. Deprived of employment, left without education, 
misrepresented in the legishitive halls by men whose interests 
are opposed to his, and before wliom he is powerless, the free 
laborer grows poorer as his wealthy neighbor grows richer ; and 
looking at the.>e things we cease to wonder at the persistent emi- 
S'ration fioni the eastern slave states, westward, of which Mr. 
Tarver said, speaking of South Carolina, " That necessity must 
be strong and urgent which induces thirty 'per cent, of the popu- 
lation of a Suite, in the short sjyace of ten years, to hrmh all the 
social ajid individiictl ties wldch hind man to the place of his 
hirth, and seek their fortunes in other landsP 

FREE WORKINGMEN FLY FROM THE SLAVE STATES. 

The slave states are the most sparsely populated of the Union ; 
their soil is ricli, their climate kindly, tliey abound in mineral 
wealth; everything there favors the workingman — yet the work- 
ino-nien of the fi'ee states refuse to go there ; and a constant 
. and large streavx of emigration has setfor years, from the slavs 
-states into the free states. The free workingmen of the slave 
states have fled from tlie oppression and blight of the slave in- 
stitution, to the part of the Union where all labor is free and 
paid. 

If we take the census report of 1850, we find that the slave 
states had sent nearly six times as many of their population into 
free territory as the free states had sent into slave territory. We 
And that Kentucky had sent on to free soil sixty thousand more 
persons than all the free states had sent into slave soil. Little 
Maryland had sent more than half as many persons into free 
territorv as all the slave states had sent into slave territory. 
Yiro-inia had sent sixty thousand more persons into free territory 
than all the free states had sent upon the slave soil. Kentucky 
and Tennessee were but little behind the other states we have 
mentioned. 

This shows the course of emigration. But it is even more 
•clearly shown in some interesting tables contained in the 
last census report — that for 1860. In a table of " Internal Mi- 
gration" we hud that there were in tlic country, and returned 



20 HOW SLAVERY INJURES THE FREE WOEKINGMAN. 

by the census-takers, 399,Y00 persons "born in Virginia, but liv- 
ing in other states ; 344,765 persons born in Tennessee, but 
living in other states ; 272,006 persons born in North Carolina, 
but living in otlier states ; 137,258 persons born in Maryland, 
but living in other states ; 32,493 persons born in Delaware, but 
living in other states ; 331,904 persons born in Kentucky, but 
living in other states. 

Now it is true that not all these 1,518,726 persons who 
had migrated from ojily the border line of slave states were 
living in the free states, but by far the greater number were. 
The *•' course of internal migration" is exhibited in a table of the 
Census Report. There we find that emigrants from Vii-ginia 
have removed " chiefly" to Ohio, Missouri, Iventucky, and Indi- 
ana; from Kentucky they have removed cliiefly to Missouri, 
Indiana, Ilhnoisand Oliio. From Maryland they have removed 
chiefly to Oliio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of 
Columbia. From Delaware they have migi-ated chiefly to Penn- 
sylvania, Maryland, Ohio and Indiana. From Tennessee tliey 
have removed chiefly to Missouri, Arkansas, Texas and Illinois. 

But this table shows us a far more remarkable fact. From 
the southern tier of slave states the migration was chiefly into 
other slave states, in a western or northwestern direction 
towards the free stales. From the border slave states the migra- 
tion was chufli/ into the free states, and into that slave state 
(Missouri) which promised first to become free. Put from the 
free states, which sent forth also a large stream of emigrants, 
there was n(? emigration to slave states; all, with insiguiflcant 
exceptions, removed to other free states. 399,700 Virginians 
had removed chiefly to Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana; 
but of 582,512 Pennsylvanians, just across the line, it is re- 
corded that tlicy removed " cliicflj" to Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, 
and Iowa. 331,004 Kcntuckians had removed " chiefly" to Mis- 
souri, Iiuliana, Illinois and Ohio; but 593,043 persons born 
across the river, in free Ohio, had removed chiefly to Indiana, 
Illinois, Iowa and ]\Iissouri. These contrasts hold good of the 
whole table. From no free state has there been emigi-ation to 
the slave states; but from every border slave state there has 
been a very heavy migration to the i'ree states. 

Observe, that this course of migration is unusual and unnatural. 



BLAVfiEY EXTERMmATES FREE MECHANICS. 21 

The tendency, in all the history of the world, has been the other 
way. Tribes and families have fled from the bleak climate and 
barren soil of the North to the milder climate and more generous 
soil of the South. A French writer, the Count de Segur, says : 
" The human race does not march in that direction ; it turns its 
back to the North ; the sun attracts its regards, its desires, and 
its steps. It is no easy matter to arrest this great current." 
In other countries all emigration has turned to the Southward, 
by an instinctive movement ; but with us the horror of slavery, 
the aversion of the free laborer to come in contact and competi- 
tion with slave labor, has sufficed to conquer even this strong 
instinctive tendency. 

Bear in mind, too, that the South has lost, by this migration, 
the best class of her citizens. The indolent masters remained ; the 
slaves remained ; those free whites who were too poor and helpless 
and ignorant either to desire or to be able to remove, remained ; 
but there has been a constant drain of the yeomanry of the border 
slave states — the forehanded farmers and industrious mechanics, 
the class whom a state can least afford to lose. These men and 
their families have helped to fill our northwestern territories and 
states ; and have taken the places of the thousands who removed 
from the border free states to the northwest. They have faced 
unwonted winters and harder conditions of life — why ? Because 
these free worhingmen felt slamry to he a curse^ a har to all 
their efforts. They were not abolitionists — they brought into 
the free states with them their curious hatred of the negro, as 
though it was the slave and not the master who was their 
oppressor. 

SLAVERY EXTERMINATES FREE MECHAOTCS. 

Charles J. Faulkner, of Vii-ginia, said, in 1832, in the legisla- 
ture of that state: ^^ Slavery lanishes free lohite labor ^ it ex- 
terminatesthe mechanic, the artisan, the manufacturer, it deprives 
them of hreadP And C. C. Clay, of Alabama, not less eminent 
in the South than Mr. Faulkner, said a few years ago : " Our 
wealthier planters, with greater means and no more skill, are 
buying out their poorer neighbors, extending their plantations 
and adding to their force. The wealthy few, who are able to 



22 HOW SLAVEKY INJURES THE FREE WORKLNGMAN. 

live on smaller profits, and to give tlieir blasted fields some rest, 
are thus pushing off the many who are merely independent. 
Thus the white ^opulatioyi has decreased, and the slave increased, 
almost ^ari jpassio in several counties of our state. In 1825 
Madison county cast about three thousand votes ; now she can- 
not cast more than two thousand three hundred. In travelling 
that country one will discover numerous farm-houses, once the 
abode of industrious and intelligent freemen, now occupied "by 
slaves, or tenantless, deserted, and dilapidated. He will see the 
moss growing on the mouldering walls of once thrifty villages, 
and will find ' one only master grasps the whole domain,' that 
once turnished happy homes for a dozen white families." 

Thus southern men, themselves slaveholders, bear witness to 
the causes which lead to the great and constant migration of the 
most valuable class of -citizens from the slave to the free states. 
The agriculturist and the mechanic alike, the blacksmith, the 
carpenter, the farmer, all are " pushed off," to use the expressive 
phrase of Mr. Clay, to make way for the masters and their slaves. 

SLAVERY SHUTS THE SOUTH AGADTST GERMANS AND IRISHMEN. 

If a considerable part of the white workingmen of the slave 
states have migrated to the free states, it is equally true that of 
the thousands ot German, Irish and other workingmen who 
have, with their families, sought our shores, the southern states 
have received but an insignificant fraction. 

To the industry and thi'ift of this part of our population a large 
share of our prosperity and wealth is owing ; without the help 
of their strong arms, the free states, though thriving and populous, 
and receiving increase from the South, must have advanced much 
more slowly than they have. This fact has been generally re- 
cognized amongst us. Indeed, in the western states special 
inducements have been held out to immigrants, so strongly have 
the people tlicrc felt the need of their labor and the advantage 
of their presence. Consider, then, what has been the loss of the 
South, which has utterly failed to attract this class, while at the 
same time it was drained to a considerable extent of its own free 
working class. 

If we compare free states with slave states, we find that while 



SLAVERY SHUTS OUT GERMAKS AND IRISHMEN, 23 

South Carolina had in I860 but 9,986 foreign born citizens. 
Massachusetts had 260,114 ; Virginia had but 35,058 foreigners, 
but Penusyslania, her neighbor, had 430,505 ; Georgia, the em- 
pire state of the South, had but 11,671, but New York had 
998,640 ; Mississippi had only 8,558, but Illinois had 324,643, 
Tennessee had 21,226, and Kentucky 59,799 ; but Ohio had 
328,254, and Indiana 118,184. Little Ehode Island, with an 
insignificant territory and a dense population of 133 to the 
square mile, had attracted 37,394 foreign emigrants ; but North 
Carolina, with a milder and more varied climate, a fertile soil, 
ready access by sea, and the advantage of a profitable fishery and 
several other special pursuits, not to speak of an immensely 
greater territory, had been able to attract to her borders but 
3,299 foreign emigrants. 

'Nor must we fail to notice that in those states where slavery 
languished or had but a slender hold, emigrants at once increased 
in numbers. Maryland had 77,536, nearly seven times as many 
as Georgia ; Delaware had 9,165, nearly three times as many as 
North Carolina; and Missouri had 160,541, as many within fif- 
teen thousand as all the slave states east of the Mississippi, ex- 
cept Maryland and Delaware. That is to say, Missouri, which 
was in the popular belief certain to become a free state before 
many years, was able to attract to her soil nearly as many emi- 
grants as Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, 
North and South CaroHna and Virginia together ! Still, slavery 
told against Missouri when compared with the free states. With 
a milder climate, immensely greater mineral resom'ces and a 
nearer and cheaper access to great markets, Missouri had attracted 
but 13.59 per cent, of foreigners, while Iowa had 15.7i per 
cent., Minnesota 33.78 per cent., and Wisconsin 35.69 per cent. 

The census report shows that of the foreign born population 
tlie free states have received over eighty-six and one-half per 
cont., and the slave states less than fourteen. It shows the 
States which have received the smallest percentage of this accre* 
tion to be North Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, and 
South Carolina — all slave states. And it shows also the singu- 
lar fact, that while eight foreign emigrants have settled in the 
free states to one in the slave states, the number of slaves— if 
we add the insignificant number of jfree colored — gives just one 
to every eight of our population. 



24 HOW SLAVEET mjURES THE FEEE WOEKINGMAN". 

FEEE WOEKINGMEN KEPT OUT OF THE FINEST PAET OF THE UNION, 

Is it no matter to vjorldngmcn that they are thus drim^i out 
andJccpt out of the largest, most fertile, and 2)leasantest jpart of 
the Union by the slave-labor system, which there robs them of 
work, and attacks their rights ? In the mild climate of the bor- 
der slave states, the seasons are longer, the productions more 
varied ; trades which can be pursued in the North during only 
eight or nine months, may be carried on there all the year 
round ; food is or ought to be cheaper ; the workingraan and 
his family need fewer and less costly clothes ; in many ways 
the conditions of life are easier, for the mechanic and laborer 
as well as the farmer, than in the colder North. But that 
great region the slavemasters closed against the free working 
men, and preserved for themselves and their slaves. 

The climate is not too hot in any of those states for white 
men and women to labor in the fields. Governor Hammond, 
of South Carolina, said : " Tlie steady heat of our summers is 
not so prostrating as the short but sudden and frequent heats 
of northern summers." White men work on the levee in 
New Orleans in midsummer, and have the severest labor put 
upon them at that. He who writes this has rolled cotton 
and sugar upon tlie levee of New Orleans in the month of 
July, and screwed cotton in Mobile Bay in August. Dr. Cart- 
wright, the great apostle of slavery, rightly remarked : " Jlcrc 
in New Orleans the large part of the drudgery — worh reguir- 
ing exposure to the sun, as railroad making, street paving, 
dray driving, ditching, and building is 'performed ly white 
people.''^ This severe labor was put upon the free white working- 
men ; the slave-owners reserved the light tasks for their slaves. 

tn Alabama, by the census of 1850, sixty-seven thousand, in 
Mississippi, fifty-five thousand, in Texas forty-seven thousand 
white men, non-slaveholders, labored in the fields, and took no 
hurt. Cotton was cultivated in Texas, before the war, with 
perfect success, by white men ; the Germans managed even to 
raise more pounds to the acre, pick it cleaner, and to get a 
higher price for it, than the neighboring planters. Olmsted 
mentions an American in Texas wlio would not employ slave 
labor, and who, with white men as his help, "produced more 
bales to the hand than any planter around him." 



TBE SOUTHEEN CLIMATE HEALTHFUL. 26 

The mortality reports ot the census show that the southern 
Btates are not peculiarly unhealthful. In Alabama, the deaths, 
per cent., were less than in Connecticut ; in Georgia they are 
1.23 per cent., in 'New, York, 1.22 ; in South Carolina they are 
1.44: percent., in Massachusetts, 1.16, which is precisely the 
same as in Louisiana, notoriously, till General Butler cleaned 
New Orleans and drove out the yellow fever, the most sickly 
state in the South. 

Notldng, therefore, has Tcept free worUngmen out of these 
states — nearer to the great marTcets of the world, having more 
abundant mineral wealth, and in emunj way more favoraUy sit- 
uated than the cold Northeast and the far away Northwest — 
except the fatal competition of the slaveowners. To avoid that, 
millions of workingmen, native and foreign born, have removed 
to the northwest, until at last the tide of emigration has even 
trenched upon the inhospitable desert, and has spread beyond 
the extreme limits of arable land, and far beyond the profitable 
reach of markets. The Northwestern farmer has burned his 
corn because he could not afford to send it to the distant sea- 
board teas it no loss to him that slavery Tcept him out of the 

fertile fields of Virginia and North Carolina ? 

Even had slavery remained in full vigor, the time had come 
when free labor, seeking new outlets and greater opportunities, 
would have pressed hardly upon it. If slavery is swept away, 
free workingmen will hereafter have opportunity in the South, 
and to all that great region a boundless future of wealth and 
prosperity opens up. The abandoned -farms, the mouldering 
villar^es, the empty cottages, will once more be filled with the 
busy and cheerful hum of the labor of freemen. 

Their cunnino- will repair the waste of unskillful slave 
labor ; their ingenious toil will redeem the barren fields of Vir- 
o-inia and other southern states. The tide of emigration, sweep- 
\w<y in that direction, may repeat in the South the marvellous 
results which it has accomplished during the last twenty-five 
years in the Northwest ; Virginia will be another Minnesota, 
North Carolina a new Iowa, and in Tennessee will be repeated 
the story of Ohio. 



^6 now SLAVERY INJURES THE FREE WORKINGMAN. 

now TO LESSEN THE BURDEN OF TAXATION. 

When a man falls into debt, and is anxious to free lninsc"'f of 
it, uliat does he do? He works harder, and lives more l'nif]:;ally, 
He tries to make a dollar more per week, and to live on a dollar 
less. In that way lie may hope to get clear of debt. Yv^ell, as 
with a man, so it is with a nation : we liave incnrred a great 
debt ; and henceforth, we must, as a people, live more econo- 
mically, and use, to better advantage, our property and our 
strength. We can no longer afford to exhaust our soil, by " art- 
less " methods of culture ; we can no longer alford to employ 
half a dozen men to do one man's work; we can no longer 
atibrd to use poor tools, to do with a hoe the work of a plough, 
to reap by hand instead of by steam, to work by main strength 
and stupidness, instead of intelligently. 

It is not enough that one part of the country shall do its best — 
the resources of all parts must be fully developed. It is not fair 
to the -working men of the Iree states, that they shall ]^ny heavier 
taxes, in order that slaveholders may indulge their fancy for 
dull, plodding, unskilled slave labor. It is not fair that we of 
the North should bear a heavy burden, more than our ]->rop(T 
share of the common debt, when, by the use of proper means, 
bv throwing the Southern states open to free labor, and to 
skilled labor, its resources can be rapidly developed to the j)oint 
where those states will be as populous, and as wealthy, as tlio 
free states. 

It' wc can discover a way to make the whole country ]-)0])u- 
lous, and to make the whole nation pros])erous, the weight of 
taxation will be much lightened ; increased numbers and in- 
creased wealth will enable us to bear, M'ithout suflering, burdens 
under which we might sink if these elements of strength Wcro 
lacking. 

WE CANNOT AFFORD SLAVERY. 

"We cannot ailbrd to omit measures which will add to our 
aljility to pay taxes. There was a time wlu-n we might live 
alter a slip-liod ia.-liiou, l»iit hereafter it is important to i^wry 
man in the country, and (■>pecially to the workingmen and ti.eir 
tamilies, that the natural resources of the whole country shall be 



SLAVERY A COSTLY BLUNDER. 27 

wisely and effectively developed. It is easy to sliow that the 
Southern states have enormous and inexhaustible wealth of iron, 
coal, copper, and many other things ; but if that mineral wealth 
is to remain, in future as in the past, in the bowels of the earth ; 
if Virginia, with the richest coal and iron deposits, is hereafter, 
as heretofore, to buy both coal and iron in Pennsylvania ; if 
Tennessee, abounding in minerals, is to continue to bo cursed 
with a slave-labor system, which forbids the development of 
her greatest sources of wealth ; if we do not use the only means 
in our power, or any one's power, to bring out that wealtli, and 
thus add enormously to the general wealth of the country — 
which can only be done by extirpating slave-labor, and substitut- 
ing free labor in its place — why then, we may as well reconcile 
ourselves — we free working men of the North — to paying per- 
petually much the heaviest share of the national taxation. 

A shrewd foreign traveller once remarked that the slave- 
labor system was such a costly economical blunder, that no 
European nation could afford it ; only a country having no debt 
and scarcely any expenses, could indulge in it. The time has 
come when we, too, can no longer afford it. If the working 
men of the free states toish to lift from their hades some portion 
of the heavy burden of taxation^ they must insist thai the south- 
ern states shall he thrown open to free lahor, in order that this 
vast region shall be enabled to yield an equal share of the na 
tional revenue. It cannot do this till it is equally wealthy ; but 
as we shall proceed to show, the slave labor system has made it 
poorer instead of richer, for many years. 

How are we to equalize the burden? By maldno- Yiro-inia 
as populous and wealthy as Pennsylvania, Kentucky as Ohio, 
Tennessee and Georgia as New York, South Carolina as Massa- 
chusetts, Mississippi as Iowa. The Lynchburg Virginiaii wrote 
some years ago : 

" The coal fields of Virginia are the most extensive in the 
world ; and the coal is of the best and purest quality ; her iron 
deposits are altogether inexhaustible, and in many instances so 
pure that it is malleable in its primitive state; and manv of 
these deposits are in the vicinity of extensive coal fields. She 
has, too, very extensive deposits of copper, lead, and i>-vi^sutn. 
Her rivers are numerous and bold, generally with fall enou<>-U 
for extensive water power." * 



28 now SLAVERY INJUEES THE FKEE WORKINGMAN. 



VIEGINIA AND PENXSYLVAXIA COMPAEED. 

But these coal and iron and copper and lead deposits of Vir- 
ginia, greater than those of Pennsylvania, and lying in a finer 
climate, are almost nntouched. And because they are so, the 
whole industry of the state has suffered. The census of 1S50 
gave the following values to agricultural lands in the adjoining 
States of Pennsylvania and Virginia : 

In Virginia, In Pcnn'a, 

Number of acres of improved land in farms 10,380,135 8,026,619 

Number unimproved 15,792,176 6,21'4,728 

Cash value of farms in Virginia, ei(jht dollars; in Pennsylvania, twcnty-fiva 
dollars per acre. 

Does any one need to be told which state is able to pay and 
will pay the largest amount of revenue to the government '^ Is 
it not easy to see that, with the same policy in Virginia which 
has prevailed in Pennsylvania, that state would in a very few 
years be as populous, as wealthy, and as great a source of reve- 
nue, as her neighbor ? And is it not to the interest of e\ery 
free workingman, every tax-payer, that this should be brought 
about ? 

Tlie Southern states, if we include Missouri and Kentucky, 
have an area of 851,508 square miles ; the free states have an 
area of only G12,597 square miles. The Soutli lias a miUlcr 
climate, shorter winters, a far more fertile soil, innnensely 
greater mineral wealth, more abundant natural water communi- 
cations with the sea, than the >[orth. Yet in 1850, by the 
census, the total value of the real and personal property of the 
free states was $1,161,081,000 greater than that of the real and 
personal property of the South, includhuj three milUons of 
slaves. Put in 18G0, according to the census of fliat \v.\\\\ 1lie 
total value of real and personal property in the free states was 
$2,057,105,208 greater than that of the South. The wealth of 
the free states, excluding the territories, Avas in 1800, in round 
numbers, nine thousand two hundred and eighty-seven millions; 
tliat of the slave states, including ^Mis^ouri, six thousand six 
hundred and thirty millions, also including the slaves! 

Now if, by v»'ise measures, by encouraging the mechanic arts, 
fostering free schools, developing mineral resources, and, in 



"no commekce, no mining, no manufactukes." 29 

short, treatin:^ the South as we treated the North^vest, we can 
make it increase as rapidly, after the war, in free popnhation, 
and in wealtli, as the ISTorthwest has, we may expect tliis difi'er- 
ence to disappear in a very few years ; we may expect the South 
to become as prosperous and as wealthy, in a few years, as the 
North is. In that case it will contrihutG a revenue to the gov- 
ernment greater than the whole North does at this time. That 
h to say^ we can dovMe our revenue without increasing our 
taxation^ or we can raise the same revenue with half the taxes. 

But to do that we must do away with the wasteful and ruinous 
system of slave-labor which has made sterile the lands of the 
South, driven out her mechanics and artisans, made ]ioor her 
people, and decreased her wealth. We cannot atiord to waste 
anything ; but Olmsted wrote to a Texan friend as the fruit of 
" a larse class of observations :" 

" The natural elements of wealth in the soil of Texas will 
have been more exhausted in ten years, and with them the re- 
wards offered liy Providence to labor will have been more 
lessened than without slavery would have been the ease in two 
hundred. After tvro hundred years' occupation of similar soils 
by a free laborinpi: community, 1 have seen no such evidence of 
exhaustion as in Texas I have after ten years of slavery." 

TESTIMONY OF SLAVEHOLDEES. 

In 1'59 Charleston had not a single ship-carpenter. lu 1859 
Governor AVise, of Virginia, said to his people : 

" Commerce has long ago spread her sails, and sailed away 
from you. You hav^e not, as yet, dug more coal than enough 
to warm yourselves at your own hearths ; you have set no tilt- 
hammer of Vulcan to strike blo^vs worthy of gods in your own 
iron foundries; you have not yet spun more that coarse cotton 
enough, in the way of manufacture, to clothe your own slaves. 
Yoil have no commerce, 7io Qnining, no mamifacturcs. You 
have relied alone on the single power of agriculture, and such 
OAjriculture ! Your sedge-patches outshine the sun. Your 
inattention to your only source of wealtli has seared the very 
bosom of mother earth. Instead of having to feed cattle on 
a thousand hills, you have had to chase the stump-tailed deer 
through the sedgc'-patclies to procure a tough beefsteak. Tlie 
present condition of things has existed too long in Virginia.'^ 



80 now SLAVERY mjTJEES THE FREE WORKlNGMAJr. 

Tliomas Marshal], anotlier slaveholder, said : 
^wo^^''!''''"^ '•'?'"''"' ^"^ *''^ '^'^^'tes; it retards improvement 

t/.e cornn.nj ; deprives the ^jmmer, the weaver, fie ,miih tL 
^Jwcmaker, tkc carpenter, of employment and mpport,- ' 

In little more than ten years Wisconsin lands became worth 
on an average nine dollars and iifty-four cents per acre; but 
after two lundred and fifty years those of Virginia, with all her 
natural udvantages, were worth but eight dollars and twenty 
seven ce;)ts per acre. Virginia, free, might have had as rapid 
an increase as Massachusetts ; she would have had in 1850 that 
^ to say, a population of 7,751,324 whites, instead of 894 800. 
Consider what would have been her wealth, with such an 
enormous population. Consider what would have been her 
ability, with her minerals, her water-power, her grain fields and 
her seacoast, to contribute to the national revenue 

If: we want to lighten the burden of taxation, we must give 
the bonth the same opportunity for growth and increase which 
has made the West and Northwest so populous and rich in the 
ast twenty-five years. But to do that, we must encourao-e free 
labor tliere-fur it is the free workingman who makes the land 
rich-an<l the free man will not and cannot toil in competition 
with the slave. 

THE WASTEFULNESS OP SLAVE LABOR. 

T!ie slave-labor system exhausts the soil, wastes its products 
and coMtirhutes less-a very great deal less-to the national 
wealth, than the more skilful and intelligent free labor The 
slave M'orkinan cannot be trusted with machinery; he cannot 
be trusted with the best tools; he must have-so the slave- 
holders themselves have said-tlic coarsest, rudest tools; any- 
thing else he breaks. Now every workingman knows that 
with licHvy, rough tools he cannot accomplish as much as -m- 
other man can with ligl.t, well-made, handy tools Every 
working man knows that it makes u world of difference wliat 
sort of a i)lough, what sort of an axe, what sort of a i)hvne, what ' 
Eort of a hunmer he uses. He wants the best ; he knows that 
It pays hnu to have the best; and he knows, too, that i^ he can 



"WASTEFULNESS OF SLAVE LAEOE. 31 

make a macliine saw, or plane, or mortice, or do anytlnrig 
else for liiiii, that is so much gained — so much more monej 
made in a given time. But the slave laborer cannot be trusted 
with any of these helps. Is it a wonder that with a ftysiem 
wJiich thus prevents th5 use of the best tools and machincjy, the 
South is pooj'? 

It is a fact, proved by the census, that lahor in Ifassackusetis 
is four times as productvoe as in South Carolina. The average 
value of the product per hea I of the cotton factories of Massa- 
chusetts was in 1855, $725 — ten times greater than the average 
value of the products of labor in South Carolina. The State of 
Massachusetts, with the help of skilled and industrious free 
labor, sent annually into the commerce of the world, values 
gwatur than that of the entire cotton crop of the South I Such 
is the enormous difi'erence betv/een slave labor and free labor. 

Mr. Guthrie, in his report on the finances, in 1851-5, pre- 
pared a table i'rom the census report, showing the average value 
of products per head in the different States. A comparison of 
Bome of the Free States with some of the Slave States, will 
show how much more productive is free labor than slave labor. 
In Massachusetts, with a bleak climate and a sterile soil, the 
average product per head of the population is valued at $100 tO ; 
in South Carolina but $50 91 ; in Kew York, $111 D-l ; in 
Georgia, the Empire State of the South, iJGl 45; in Pennsyl- 
vania, $91) 30 ; in Virginia, ?=59 42 ; in Ohio, $75 82 ; in Ar- 
kansas, $52 04 ; and in North Carolina, $49 38. 

SLAVERY LOWERS THE VALUE OF LAND. 

JBut this is not all ; slave labor not only produces far less, and 
th^i adds less to the taxable wealth of the community ; it at 
the same time wastes and ruins the substance of the country. It 
ruins the soil. The cotton planters were continually removing 
westward, with their slaves, to new lands ; and Olmstead reports 
that in Texas even, recently settled as it is, he already found the 
two curses of the planter — worn out and abandoned plantations 
and " poor whites." In North Carolina, six bushels of Avhcat to the 
acre is counted a fair crop. Compare Virginia and Pennsyl- 
vania, and we find, by the census report, that the actual crops 



32 now BLAVEET INJTJIIES THE JliEE ■W0EKING3IAU'. 

per acre of corn were, in Virginia eighteen, and in Pennsyl- 
vania thirty-six bushels ; of tobacco, in Virginia — whose speci- 
ality is tobacco— 630 pounds per acre, in Pennsylvania 730 
pounds. Under the slave-labor system of the South, according 
to Mr. Gregg, an accredited writer on the southern side, South 
Carolina had, before the war, one hundred and twentj^-five thou- 
sand white persons " who ought to work and who do not, or 
who are so employed as to be wholly unproductive to the State." 
Does anyone imagine that it is not the slave system, but the 
climate, which is to blame for this enormous and ruinous waste 
of labor and of the natural resources of the South ? In Virginia, 
wherever, before the war, free labor got the upper hand, and 
slavery was driven out, there productions were at once largely 
increased. The Charleston Standard remarked, in 1857, " Tlie" 
Virginia journalists have frequently borne witness to the fact, 
that in many districts where large estates have been divided and 
sold to small farmers, the land is turning off from three to six 
times as much produce as it did a few years ago." In Caliill, 
Mason, Brooke, and Tyler counties, Virginia, which had, before 
the war, a free laboring population, with slaves but one in fif- 
teen to the freemen, but no advantages of tovv'ns in or near 
them, land was worth, in 1855, $7 75 per acre. In Southamp- 
ton, Surrey, James Town, and ISTew Kent counties, in the same 
state, where the slave population was as 1 to 2, the land ivas 
worth hut half as much, $4 50 per acre. In Fairfax county the 
slave population was much reduced within the last tv/cnty-five 
years ; free laboring men took the places of the slave laborers ; 
and the County Commissioners reported officially : 

" In appearance, the county is so changed, in many parti^, that 
a traveller, who passed over it ten years ago, woi'ild not nfw 
recognize it. Thousands and thousands of acres luid been culti- 
vated in Tobacco, by the former proprietors, would not pay the 
cost, and were abandoned as worthless, and became covered with 
a wilderness of pines. These lands have been purchased by 
northern emigrants ; the large tracts divided and subdivided, 
and cleared uf pines ; and neat farm-houses and barns, Avith 
smiliii'^ lields of grain and grass, in the season, salute the de- 
lighted gaze of the^ beholder. Ten years ago, it was a mooted 
question whether Fairfax lands could be made productive ; and, 
if 60, would they pay the cost '{ This problem has been satisf ac- 



SLAVERY IMPOVERISHES THE LAND. 33 

torily solved by many, and, in consequence of the above altered 
state of things, school-houses and churches have doiLbled in 7mmr 
lerr 

That is to say, slavery makes a rich country poor, free labor 
makes a poor country rich ; slave labor — improvident, wasteful, 
unskillful — rots out the heart of the land, and, finally, leaves the 
soil when it can no longer make a living from it : free labor 
comes in, and, in ten years, restores the soil, and works it at so 
great a profit that the face of the country is changed, and 
" churches and schools are doubled." But onark ! u)itil slave 
labor is driven out^free labor will not come in. The two sys- 
tems cannot work together. Which, then, shall we protect — 
the slavemaster, who impoverishes the country, or the free 
laborer who enriches it ? 

The Wheeling Intelligencer^ then published in a slave state, 
spoke out on this question, some ten years ago, in the following 
words : 

" The present great and pressing want of our state, like that 
of the whole United States, is cultivation and improvement, not 
enlargement and annexation, and the obvious and the only mode 
of a rapid growth of our state or city is such a change of public 
policy as shall invite to our aid and co operation our Caucasian 
cousins, the intelligent, moral, and industrious artizans, mechan- 
ics, miners, manufacturers, and commercial men of Europe and 
the northern states, to share our taxation, develop our resources, 
and make ours a white man's country, with all the energy, edu- 
cation, love of order, of freedom, and of order characteristic of 
the Anglo-Saxon race. The history of the world, and especially 
of the States of this Union, shows most conclusively ih^t public 
prosperity bears an almost mathematical 'proportion to the degree 
of freedom enjoyed by all the inhabitants of the state. M.Qn 
will always work better for the cash than for the lash. The free 
laborer will produce and save as much, and consume and waste 
as little as he can. The slave, on the contrary, will produce and 
save as little, and consume and waste as much as possible. 
Hence states and counties filled with the former class must 
necessarily flourish and increase in population, arts, manntac- 
tures, wealth, and education, because they are animated and in- 
cited by all the vigor of the will ; while states filled with the 
latter class must exhibit comparative stagnation, because it is the 
universal law of nature that force and fear end in ruin and 
decay." 

5 



34 now SLAVERY INJUKES TUE FKEE WORKINGMAN. 



EFFECTS OF FKEE AND SLAVE LABOR CONTRASTED. 

In the newl J settled free states we find villages, towns, cliurclics, 
schools, and other conveniences of civilization springing up in 
the immediate track of the settlers ; in the slave states, on the 
contrary, these are to a great extent lacking. The free work- 
ingman of Iowa, or Minnesota, may count upon being able to 
send his chihlren to good schools, to attend clnn-ch with his 
family, to enjoy the profits of a sale in an adjacent village for 
all the " small truck" of his farm, if he is a farmer ; or if he is 
a mechanic, to obtain employment, through the gatliering of the 
population in villages and towns, to afibrd him a comfortable 
living. In the slave states, on the contrar}'^, even in the oldest 
settled of them, towns and villages are few and far apart ; the 
small farmer can find no sale for his chickens, eggs, vegeta- 
bles or fruits ; the free mechanic is restricted to the few cities 
where alone he can find employment ; all inducements to any 
methods of mechanical labor, or of farming, not practised in 
cities or upon great slave plantations, are lacking. 

So few are the towns, even in tlie long settled states of Georgia 
and South Carolina, that a large part of the railroad stations 
are numbered — as station 1 , station 2, station 14 ; and where, as 
at Millen, and other points, a name is given, there is, in most 
cases, no town or village, but only a depot for cotton. 

SLAVERY LEAVES NO CUANCE FOR SMALL FARMERS. 

Of course, in such a country, with such a state of afl'airs, 
the small farmer, and the country carpenter, blacksmith, 
wheelwright, &c., have no chance to live. The small farmer, 
Avitli us in the free states, carries his chickens, eggs, featliers, 
turkeys, pigs, apples, and other minor produce to the " store," 
in the next village, and witli this produce often clothes bis fam- 
ily, and keei)S up the supply of tea, cofi'ee and sugar, while tlie 
staple of his farm, his grain or cattle, go to pay the cost of labor, 
and other expenses, and to form the balance of profit, M'hich 
laid by, makes him yearly a more comfortable and independent 
man. Ihit in the slave states this small farmer is surrounded 
by great plantations; no town or village is near him where ho 



SLAVERY GIVES NO CHANCE TO SMALL FAEMEE3. 35 

can sell the profitable "small truck;" he must neglect this 
important source of profit for the man of few acres ; he toils 
away in tlie cotton field, and Ids wife toils with him; and tliej 
are no better off at the year's end than at the beginning. 

Moreover, he does not enjoy the intellectual benefit of a 
weekly visit to a town or villnge; his children have no school 
provided for them ; he and his wife cannot often go to church. 
He is deprived, too, of the numberless conveniences A\hich tlie 
numerous villages and towns, even in the most recently settled 
free states, afford to the farmer there. If he needs the services 
of a carpenter, or tailor, or blacksinith, or wagon maker, of 
any mechanic, the farmer of the slave states must either set out 
on a long journey over bad roads, for fifty or sixty miles— or he 
must do without. In South Carolina, to tin's day, the country 
people are obliged, in this way, to make their own rude, heavy, 
inconvenient wagons, often Avithout a tire on the wheels, which 
are not unfi-equently of solid wood. They must make their own 
ill-fitting harness; they must build their own rude cabins; no 
mason, or plasterer, or carpenter, or skilled nu^chanic can be 
found to help them; on the rich plantations such mechanics are 
found — l)ut they ore slaves. 

There is thus, in tlie condition of society which is created by 
the slave labor system, no room^ and no encouragcyneiit for the 
free mechanie and the small farmer, who make up the bulk of 
our population in the free states, and whose industry, and thrift 
and intelligence make the country prosperous and happy. 

Does any one ask Avhy this is so? AVhy has slavery this 
singular and disastrous effect ? Because the wealtliy own slaves, 
and " do not need the services of the free workingmen," to 
quote once more the words of ]\[arion. The rich planter livino- 
upon his estate, owns his slave mechanics, goes North or to Eu- 
rope when he wants to amuse himself, and has no interest in the 
social advancement of the county in which he happens to be 
settled. What shoidd he care for schooU ? his children hive 
tutors at home, or go to northern colleges. Why should he 
seek to form or elevate society around him ? When he wants 
" company " he goes to Charleston, or Savannah, or Mobile, or 
New Orleans, or New York. AVhy should he buy the small 
farmer's " truck " ? His own slaves raise all he wants. Why 



36 HOW SLAVEEY INJURES THE FREE WORKmOMAN. 

should lie employ free mechanics ? He prefers to luy a carpen- 
ter and sell him again when the work is done. Moreover, he 
would not help to support the village store, if there was one — 
for he huys his supplies at wholesale in the great city. He 
does not need the village tailor, for his clothes are made in New 
York. His wife does not not employ the village milliner, for 
she gets her dresses from JSTew Orleans, or New York, or 
Paris. 

In short, the planter has no interest in the county where he 
happens to own soil, except to raise as much cotton off the land 
as possible ; he spends the proceeds away from homo. 

WHY THE SLAVE STATES LACK CAPITAL. 

But with this, there has been a singular complaint amongst 
the planters, which meets one in almost every essay pi-inted by 
DeBow ; a complaint of a lack of capital. " The south needs 
capital " was the constant cry. " Our tanneries will not succeed, 
because of our limited capital," says a writer on the resources of 
Georgia. " For the last twenty years, floating capital, to the 
amount of $500,000 per annum has left Charleston, and gone 
out of the state " complained Governor Hammond, in a famous 
essay on Southern Industry. " Ninety millions of capital," he 
Bays in another place, " has been drained out of South Carolina 
in twenty years ;" and another writer, urging the establishment 
of manufactories in the south, admits that " we have not the 
capital to spare." We do not hear such complaints in the free 
states. Our workmen arc not idle, our mines are not undevel- 
oped, our manufactories are not stopped for want of capital. 

But they would be, if the manufacturer — or mine owner — had 
not only to buy his machinery, hut also his loorjanen. No com- 
pany, however wealthy, could afford to run a mill in Lowell, or 
work a coal mine in Pennsylvania, or keep up a furnace in Pitts- 
burgh, if it had to provide means, not only to pay for its machinery 
but to buy also its working men and women. All the industry 
of the free states would come to a stand still if this system 
ehould suddenly be forced upon us. No wonder the numu- 
facturing industry of the South was never set going "for lack of 
capital." 



WHY SLAVE STATES LACK CAPITAL, S7 

But this same mischief has injured the South in other ways. 
Look, for instance, at this : Take two men, both farmers ; let one 
remove to Texas, the other to Iowa ; let each have his land pur- 
chased ; and have five thousand dollars over. Each needs a carpen- 
ter to build a comfortable house for him. The lowan gives 
notice in the newspapers — which are glad to print such intelli- 
gence — that carpenters can get higher wages in his neighborhood 
than farther East; and he readily gets the services of an enter- 
prising young mechanic. But the Texan ? He must luy Ms 
cajyenter ; he must pay probably two thousand dollars for the 
man. He has but three thousand left— the lowan has spent 
only the w^ages of a carpenter while he needed him. 

That done, each requires three laborers to clear and cultivate 
the new land. The lowan advertises, ofiers good wages, and 
gets his men without trouble ; the Texan must ;pay out his re- 
maining three thousand dollars for three slaves. He has now 
all his money invested— the lowan, however, has yet the greater 
part of his in hand. He is able to purchase the best implements 
—but the Texan must manage without or run in debt. He is 
able to contrilnite to the building of a school and church ; but 
the Texan, in the first place, has no money left for such pur- 
poses ; and in the next place, the children of his slaves must 
not be educated. Therefore^ his oion children have no school or 
church. The lowan, having still say two thousand dollars in 
hand, may set up a friend, in a mill, or a store— and both will 
be supported by the laboring population which he has gathered 
about him, who are earning wages and will purchase clothing and 
provisions. But the Texan has no money to loan for such enter- 
prises; and if he had, they could not succeed, for his slaves have 
no wages to spend, and he gets his supplies at wholesale, from 
his factor in New Orleans or Shreveport. 

Let any one, farmer or laboring man, answer, who is the most 
comfortable, whose children have the best chance to grow up 
intelligent, who has the most money at command, the Texan 
slave owner, or the lowan farmer? who builds up around 
him the most quickly, a thriving community? who gives em- 
ployment to free mechanics ? whose skill and capital is most pro- 
ductive of wealth and progress, and happiness, to the neighbor- 
hood? 



SS now ELAVEKY IKJURES THE FREE WORKINGMAlf. 

Wc Bee by tliis instance, how it is that in the South they 
always " lacked capital." The Texan emptied his purse befure 
he got fairly started ; the lowan had money in hand when his 
fiirni was thoroughly furnished. The Texan was condenmed 
by the slave system to live in solitude — the lowan at once, and 
necessarily, gathered a little company about him, of working- 
men, and mechanics, and their families, and if he selected his 
farm wisely, he saw within a year a little village spring up near 
him, with its schools, church, stores, and proper supply of me- 
chanics of different kinds. 

Mechanics and Pihorlng men, rememler, that the sJnve sys- 
tem leaves no room for you ! It sJmts you out! The Southern 
planter does not need you ; he cannot bear your independent 
^vays; he "buys a car}ienter when he wants one." lie and his 
fellow jihmters have, lor half a century, shut up, against you 
and your families, the finest part of the Union ; lohile slavery 
lasts you can fjain no fool hold there, for every slaveholder is 
your ciiciny j your children can have no schools there; you can 
have none of the conveniences of life ; j'ou cannot even get em- 
ployment. But do away v»'ith the slave system, make all labor 
free, take away from the rich planter his fatal monopoly, let 
every man wlio works be paid wages according to his abih'ty, 
and let every employer jiay just Mages to his Avorkmen, and 
you can safely go to the South, and take wilh you the society, 
the schools, the churches, the frequent villages and towns, all 
the conveniences of civilization, which the slave labor system 
has not. 

Slavery is the free workingman's worst enemy; let this truth 
be pj)rea(i abroad amongst you, free "svorkingmen of the North 
and South ! Then, for your own sakes, and for the sake of your 
children, v:h(>m you do not wish to grow wp in the overcrowded 
Isorth, let shivery die. In the South, if slavery is abolislied, 
the wages of mcchaincs and lahoring men. must for many years 
io come he very high. Tiiat whole A'ast region is almost with- 
out skilled labor; free mechanics have been driven from it. A 
region greater than edl the free states, as heedthful, with a finer 
climnte, more ahundant mineral resources, cheaper lands and a 
richer soil, lies open before you and your families. You have 
only to possess it, and with your skill and eneigy subdue it. 



"Wny SLAVE STATES LACK CAPITAL. 39 

Then yon will not feel the hard struggle -which severe climate, 
and tenement houses, and lack of employment, and tlie op- 
pression caused by an overcrowded labor market, subjected 
you to in the North. But you can never enter that land of 
ease and -plenty ; without first striking down your fatal enemy ^ 
slavery I 



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